By Pepper Parr
January 9th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
City Council now works just a little differently.
Instead of scheduling the Standing Committee meetings (there are three Standing Committees) on different days of the week, Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, using her Strong Mayor powers, decided to use a Committee of the Whole approach.
Ward 6 Councillor Angelo Bentivegna serving as the Chair of a Committee of the Whole (CoW)
A Committee of the Whole (CoW) includes every member of Council and in the past the Chair has been a specific Councillor; more often than not Councillor Angelo Bentivegna did that job.
Not anymore. The Mayor Chairs the meeting and during the meeting invites the Council member that is the Chair of a Standing Committees to do what they did in the past.
The difference is that when the CoW moves to a Standing Committee format people have to sit in different places in the Council Chamber and that means what they call “resetting the room”.
Council playing musical chairs. Councillor Lisa Kearns moving from her ward 2 seat at the Council horseshoe to the position used by the Chair of the Cow meeting. Are you confused? They were.
The Standing Committee Clerk instructs the person that will serve as the Chair to leave where they were sitting as a member of Council and takes the spot where they will sit as Chair.
Any Staff members taking part in the meeting have to move from where they were sitting to another seat; the Clerk has to move the name plates that identify the person sitting in a particular seat.
Then the A/V people have to be certain that the equipment being used is running properly – in the Burlington Council Chamber that is never a given.
So for a few minutes you have people scurrying from seat to seat.
That happens three times as each of the Standing Committed takes their turn doing their work under a CoW format.
What difference does using a CoW approach mean, what benefit is there – none that we could see – except the Mayor controls the whole thing.
To be fair, we don’t quite how the meeting that started on Monday will end today on Tuesday.
The meeting was recessed at just after 4:00 pm and will reconvene this morning at 9:30 am.
My point should be expanded. Up until now, the three Committees of Council met on separate days. Often they had packed agendas, with many separate issues and often citizens registered to delegate, all in queues for each issue. In each meeting, the delegates could wait for their turn on their issue often an hour or two while other issues were dealt with and delegates on their issue preceded them. As a delegate you often did not know how long things would take before it was your turn. At least they did have evening sessions sometimes devoted to just one issue. This of course suited people who worked during the day and could not attend then without booking most of a day off.
Now multiply these issues for delegates by three, with three meetings held in sequence during two long days (and maybe an evening thrown in). When the meeting you are delegating at is the last one, or even the second one, when do you show up (or log in thru Zoom)? How long do you have to sit through other issues and other meetings before it’s your turn? Could be many hours now and will anyone on staff let you know when your time might be coming up ahead of time so you don’t have to be there in person or in Zoom for the whole meeting schedule? I have my doubts.
As has been noted by others, the treatment of citizens who wish to delegate has been worsening for quite a few years, even before this Council. This move to sequenced meetings is done for time management only – Council’s time management. They get it done in two days. It is being done against citizen delegate time management and will only serve to further frustrate delegates and to turn more citizens away from delegating just when Burlington needs more people to delegate against limits to advocacy, stifling of transparency, decline in accountability and a general turn away from democracy toward autocracy by Burlington City Council. Question is, how do we stop this? No one asked our opinion and no one will.
Those who actually value democracy didn’t take strong mayor powers or promised never to use them.
Thing is, in musical chairs there is always a loser after each round. I’m thinking it will be the citizens of Burlington as usual in this case of Council shuffle. Hope I’m wrong.